Naperville prepares for tougher school standards

ISAT changes expected to make test more difficult for students

March 04, 2013|By Gary Gibula, Special to the Tribune

Naperville school officials are hoping that tougher new state grading standards will encourage students to achieve higher marks.

The Community Unit School District 203 Board of Education recently received a report that the Illinois Standard Achievement Test is being made more difficult in some areas to prepare students for common-core standards being adopted throughout most of the country.

Tim Wierenga, assistant superintendent for assessment and analytics, explained three changes in the ISAT this year.

One, which pertained to No Child Left Behind legislation, says the target for Adequate Yearly Progress, or AYP, is expected to be raised from 85 percent meeting or exceeding standards to 92.5 percent. Another calls for 20 percent of test questions being aligned with common-core standards.

"The third change is that there's going to be a raise in cut scores," Wierenga told board members. "The purpose of that is to take into account that students on the ISAT have scored as many as 10 to 15 percentage points higher than on the Prairie State exam, due to increased rigor."

Districts worry that the higher grading standard means some students and schools will not meet federal guidelines for AYP.

"The state also decided to help us in terms of our ISAT planning by taking our data from previous years and applying the new cut scores to them," Wierenga said.

For example, 94.7 percent of District 203 students taking the ISAT met or exceeded the standard for math scores in 2012. Applying the new cut scores lowered that figure to 80 percent, which otherwise does not meet the standard for AYP.

"In effect, this is a triple whammy in that they are making the tests somewhat more difficult, they're raising the bar in terms of what meets and exceeds for students and raising the bar for how many meet and exceed," said school board President Mike Jaensch. "Effectively, 90-something percent of the schools in the state will not make AYP next year, if nothing changes."

Wierenga said the state again this year had applied for a waiver from meeting federal standards, but it was not yet known if the request would be granted.

"We've also done our own study and applied those standards to the last four and five years in order to help our schools plan," he said. "It's about school improvement, to see what the trends are for schools."

Although exact figures are unknown, Wierenga said he thought District 203 compared favorably with surrounding districts.

"One way to look at it is the grading scale in a class," said Superintendent Dan Bridges. "If I got 90 percent on a test, then I got an A. The next day the teacher comes in and says an A is now 94 percent. I may then increase my performance to try and get that A."

School officials said curriculum and content had not changed, but in effect the bar for achievement had been raised.

"The whole implementation of common-core standards is really causing us to look at the rigor of our classrooms and what we're doing there to ensure that our kids are college- and career-ready when they leave high school," Bridges said.